Yes, Democrats can work with Trump to deliver progress.

Democrats and (MAGA) Republicans, actually, have a lot of opportunities for collaboration.

Reflexive negative partisanship is a cancer for our democracy. In 2020, it kept low-income children out of public schools for over a year. So, before Democrats decide to return to the uncompromising-resistance-first attitudes of the first Donald Trump term, I hope everyone can take a deep breath, reflect on the right Americans have to functional government, and consider a path forward that involves a healthy mix of opposing bad ideas and joining forces to advance good ones. I voted for Kamala Harris, because I felt she would do a better job delivering progress, but there are nonetheless a variety of areas where Democrats and Republicans can partner to keep us moving forward over the next four years.

Think I’m crazy? This teamwork did happen during the first Trump term on criminal justice reform (First Step Act) and the Covid response (CARES Act).

Here are some ideas for starters:

Health care is arguably the biggest social policy challenge in the United States. A decade after full implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the uninsured rate for children is rising again and even insured Americans continue to struggle with outrageous costs. While Donald Trump unhelpfully lashes out at Obamacare to score political points, he seems to genuinely understand the health care status quo is cruel and unsustainable. When Trump ran for president in 2000 as a Reform Party candidate he said, “I believe in universal health care. I believe in whatever it takes to make people well and better. ... [I]t's an entitlement to this country if we're going to have a great country.” In 2015, he lavished praise on Scotland’s socialized health system and, during his first term, told Australia’s prime minister that their single-payer health care system is better than our own:

Similarly, JD Vance has repeatedly criticized surprise medical bills in the past and, in 2019, praised Bernie Sanders as his favorite Democrat “purely in terms of policy outcomes.” Vance even thought that Medicare for All could be a “net positive.”

Now, I’m not naive and don’t believe Democrats can work with Trump and Republicans to pass a single-payer health care system, but could we move in the direction of an improved insurance-based system like those in Japan, the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland? At a bare minimum, could Democrats and Republicans work together to build on Trump’s hospital price transparency initiative? U.S. medical billing practices — Google “chargemaster” and lose a few hours of your life — would likely be prosecuted as financial fraud in Europe and East Asia. Given Vance’s professed concern for child well-being, is it possible to build on current policies providing for continuous child enrollment in Medicaid or CHIP? Oregon offers continuous enrollment from age 0 to 6 — what if all states guaranteed continuous enrollment from 0 to 6? Or even 0 to 10? 12? 18? There is majority support for single-payer health care in the swing states, so it’s not hard to imagine health care as being a fruitful area for bipartisan cooperation.

Like health care has been for a long time, housing is now on the path to becoming permanently unaffordable for working- and middle-class Americans — a genuine post-pandemic affordability crisis has emerged — but Harris and Trump actually had overlapping ideas during the campaign. Both candidates believed that federal land in the Southwest could be utilized to address housing shortages in Las Vegas and Phoenix. Surely, Democrats and Republicans can work together to make that land available for building new homes. And, while they’re at it, they can cooperate on reducing unnecessary regulations that make housing construction unnecessarily expensive — an area where there’s overlap between Republicans and the Democratic-leaning YIMBY movement.

How about immediate measures to reduce demand while new supply is built? The cynical “mass deportations” strategy is ridiculous, cruel, and wrong on the merits, but there are levers government can pull to put downward pressure on demand without hurting vulnerable people. Like in Canada, Singapore, and New Zealand, non-resident foreign ownership of residential real estate could be punitively taxed or effectively banned. Moreover, a Trump administration could work with Democratic states and cities to impose restrictions on Airbnb-style vacation rentals, which would help to reduce rents and increase the supply of housing available for sale as profiteers get out of the short-term rental business. Such a policy would even appeal to Trump’s buddies in the hotel industry! Perhaps Trump-friendly Eric Adams could provide the Department of Housing and Urban Development with some best practice? Both of the aforementioned ideas might suit Vance who has mused about the problematic financialization of housing.

Child policies are another area ripe for bipartisan collaboration during the Trump administration. Both Harris and Trump endorsed generous expanded child tax credit (ECTC) proposals during the campaign. Getting these past a Republican Congress would be extremely challenging — particularly without the imposition of an onerous, bureaucratic work requirement that could effectively exclude the neediest families — but it’s not outside the realm of imagination that a compromise ECTC policy could be signed into law, especially given Republican interest in pro-natalist policies.

Distinct from an ECTC to assist with child-rearing expenses, there’s also the potential for bipartisan cooperation on reducing insanely expensive child care costs. And, to be clear, this can be done in a way that, as Vance noted while campaigning, honors that some parents prefer for child care to take place at home rather than an institutional center. He was unfairly mocked for this position, which is actually part of Nordic child care policies. See Finland:

You are entitled to child home care allowance if you have a child under 3 years old who does not have a place in municipal day care. Parents do not have to look after their child at home themselves - the caregiver can be another person, for example a grandparent or a paid caregiver. Read more about child home care allowance on Kela’s website.

Thus far, I’ve emphasized social infrastructure — health care, shelter, and child care policy — but what about physical infrastructure? Trump fancies himself as a competent builder who fixes dysfunctional projects — often citing his experience with New York City’s Wollman Rink in the 1980s — so is it possible that he could work with Gavin Newsom to fix the disastrous California high-speed rail project? While Republicans are generally anti-rail, Trump praised Japan’s high-speed rail system in his X livestream with Elon Musk.

Putting the project to deliver fast rail service between Los Angeles and San Francisco on a path to completion could be a legacy-defining achievement for the president, and Newsom — who praised Trump’s assistance during Covid — seems willing to join forces with the politically toxic Republican president when their interests align. Moreover, it would represent an opportunity for Trump to compete with the Chinese — who use “great works” as marketing for their authoritarian system — by demonstrating that America can also build transformational infrastructure.

Lastly, there is indeed space for a meeting of the minds on defense policy. Like Donald Trump, Barack Obama expressed displeasure with insufficient European military spending. There’s the potential for a good-cop, bad-cop strategy to emerge, which could ultimately lead to a European Union with stronger, more autonomous defense capabilities. Democrats would be the “good cop” who celebrates European Union multilateralism and encourages the trade bloc to emerge as a powerful security bloc alongside NATO, while Trump is the “bad cop” who firmly chastises European countries to increase defense spending and do the heavy lifting to guarantee security in a post-war Ukraine.

(Want a couple more ideas? How about a bipartisan Covid commission? Or discussing an immigration policy that cracks down on false asylum claims — especially from outside the continent — while liberalizing labor mobility for Mexicans and Central Americans whose U.S. citizen cousins helped to deliver the Trump victory?)

Yes, this is all an exceedingly optimistic take on what could happen over the next four years — I get it. And there will surely be many moments when Democrats should militantly oppose hideous Trump plans. But there’s more than enough doomerism right now, and as a progressive, I think it’s important to still try and imagine a brighter future. A Trump-dominated Republican Party that won a massive number of working-class voters imposed brutal political costs on Democrats, but also presents an opportunity for constructive collaboration.